Writing in this month’s edition of the medical journal BMC Public Health, the organisers of the project, dubbed Spotlight, say they will be looking at the physical and social environment which shapes people’s behaviour, and will also identify the best opportunities for reducing the epidemic of obesity in the European community.
More than 50% of the European adult population is now overweight and up to a fifth of the population is obese, but differences have been found dependent on age, household income and culture as well as between different countries across the region.
Project manager, Dr Jeroen Lakerveld, of the VU University Medical Centre of Amsterdam, said: “While these differences help us focus on potential causes of obesity, they are not enough to explain what the specific drivers of weight gain are on a day-to-day basis.
“We need to understand how the physical and the social environment lead to changes in people’s activity levels and eating behaviour,” he said. “We need to understand the interplay between the barriers and difficulties to maintaining a healthy weight, and more importantly, we need to identify what the best options are for solving these problems.”
Source: Spotlight
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